Going south

Tuesday.

Slept unscathed in a tornado alley last night. (Southern Illinois) At 4 am the sirens sounded and we learned there were tornados in the area. You know how I love weather and consider it an important topic of conversation. I was almost as hysterically happy as local meteorologists. To go from snow flying in Minnesota to mid-Missouri where insects began ing our windshield to Marion, Il where we could hear bird song and peepers in the pond out back. Head-jerking.

I am headed to our daughter and family in Chattanooga. Anita is helping drive because Denis couldn’t come. Okay. Honestly? She’s driving, I’m playing the dashboard.

Denis had to cancel lectures for this coming weekend at CCS and the Paidiea conference as he fell – I don’t want to say hopelessly, though it  can feel that way – behind. Cancelling engagements is not good news for them or us. But last week his dad was in the hospital in Mpls and his mom is also having serious health problems. Denis made five trips up and back, and expects to make more. They don’t have any assistance or plans to get it, so navigating these shores is difficult. This would not surprise those of you who’ve helped parents through this stage of life. Crises happen and they don’t check your calendar first. (That sounded trite.)

We hope some lessons are not lost on us. We are taking notes and saying to one another: WRITE THIS DOWN: Children! Before I become a dangerous driver, cut my license in half and hide my keys. Do not listen to my howls.  … and many other such-like things.

We thought one of us should still make the trip to Chattanooga since some little people hadn’t seen us in a long time and were hoping white-haired grandma and no-haired grandpa were coming. It’s hard to go without Denis; he feels very sad not to see them. But Anita is a wonderful traveling friend. We’re highly entertained by lots of things, like Kentucky dams and bar-b-q and country western radio. Just heard someone sing he wanted  “faster horses, younger wimen, older whiskey and more money.”  What a family man!

Take this body

Today I had an hour between appointments so I stopped home before I went to 12^th Street Dental Clinic. It seemed a good idea when I set them up one after the other. Go to the surgeon get a few basal cells removed, no problem, then get over to the dentist. It wasn’t like I was getting a mastectomy, but the incision was a little larger than I expected. And having loaded needles stuck in your nose is not the little “pinch” they promise. Then came the yanking and hitting a squirter followed by the  smell of grilled flesh and what with the lidocaine not being quite enough, I left feeling more disheveled than usual. It wasn’t a big deal, of course, but it was starting to smart. I wanted to call my dentist and say I need to cancel, because I just had a basil cell carcinoma removed from my outside left nostril which would be like saying the dog ate my homework. The thought of the hygienist resting her vacuum pumps and tooth polishers on my face made me want to throw up. However, I can imagine dental people teaching you a lesson the next time you do show up, clinking their tools on your nerves and popping the drill under your tongue, so I actually drove over to the office to cancel. Luckily the stitches were still oozing and I hoped they would add credibility to my story. I’ll bet they think I’m a piece of work.

The stitches hitched up my left nostril so I look a little like Jack Nicholson with a sneer. Hoping it’s not permanent.

This timing of this is Providential, really. Possibly a tiny joke God has sent me. This weekend Denis and I will be at Zion Church in Lincoln, NB where we will each be speaking. My topic is body image and living with disfigurement, which is a serious matter. Offering my/our “our bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1) is a daily effort and grows more interesting by the year. That God desires not only our hearts and minds, but our bodies, too, is a compelling argument for accepting them as they are with all their imperfections and corruptions.

Where am I

Past three weeks. For five years Marsena’s been caring for The Great Aunt, almost 89, and she can’t do it anymore. Her margins are gone. Plus she needs to find work. Denis and I have been here now almost a month. Helping make decisions. We’re so grateful there’s a beautiful memory care place The Aunt loves – she’s been there for respite care and can’t say enough good about it. The food! The comfort! The staff! Alzheimer’s makes you look at someone you know and love and even though you tell yourself this is not the person she used to be, nor is it the person she will be someday, you still get heart-sick, worried, even annoyed and you hate like anything to get drawn into petty arguments and corrections about whatever and yet you do. Or at least, I have. In my head, anyway, I’ve told her off. Sorry.

Day before yesterday. It’s time to move to assisted care. AR is angry and terrified. Any kind of change has always been a phobic catalyst. In these later stages of Alzheimer’s it’s worse. She’s lost the ground of who she is and what she can do. She’s saying dreadful things about Marsena. Doesn’t want to see her again. Threatening to have her “agents” on the east coast rescue her. She wants to go back to Mass. She HATES Autumn Leaves. She doesn’t want to see anyone. Her heart is broken, ours, too. We haven’t found ways to comfort her. Sorting through the remainder of her things is sad. The accumulation of possessions – how they’re too much at the end of life. But perhaps this is inevitable even when you clarify and eliminate, there’s still stuff. The staff at Autumn Leaves are saying give time, give time. Transition sometimes takes a few weeks. We hope so, we hope so.

Yesterday. Watching the Vikings play. Ah, love that Brett. Denis is under an afghan and drinking coffee. Marsena is downstairs doing a little work on the apartment, it helps her to be busy. We’ll be helping with more of that tomorrow. Denis is feeling worse today, sadder. I’m better, so that’s good.

Today. When I’m sick with a bad cold I drown in hot lemon tea with honey, so soothing. Today Psalm 103 is lemon honey. God’s love: forgives, heals, redeems, crowns with love and compassion, satisfies, works righteousness, justice, is great, from everlasting to everlasting. Praise for the soul. Praise for God. Haven’t seen The Aunt for three days, the staff advised letting her settle in first. We pray and pray.

Later. I went for the first visit. I'm scared. I observed her a moment, watching her in a comfy chair, her feet up, watching TV with others, (something none of us could do all day, which annoyed her no end). I saw her laugh. When I touched her, she looked up and beamed, “I was praying someone would come by to cheer me, and here you are! Where’s Marsena?!”

I forgot

I just told Denis we needed to reboot our router, so we both headed downstairs, me to get a drink and him saying let’s talk a minute while down there. A second later he was saying, why did I come down here now? And then, what were we going to talk about?

That reminded me, though who knows if I can retain this long enough to make a post? I’m working on the last page of the next issue of Notes From Toad Hall. I’m going to title it: “Things I had a minute ago and can’t find now. “ Like: Title to the book I was going to write. Or: Cell phone. (I’m always calling it from the land line and running up and down the stairs to locate it. Yesterday it was on the back porch, but my ringtone is a bird call and I thought…oh, well. This is making me short of breath.)

If you want to contribute a list send it along. If you remember to do this soon I might be able to use it.

Someone to Watch Over Me*

I was reading this morning in Psalm 71 where David prays for God not to leave him in his old age. In my 20s I thought this was a nice sentiment. Today it feels a bit more relevant having just now arguably made a case for abandonment. Really, sometimes I feel like I should probably be driven to the wilderness and left. And I ain’t going to survive like that TV guy who digs tubers and eats roaches.

It’s been raining steadily all day. Chilly and wet. Not a big deal, just that it adds to the minor key. I went to the Good Food Store. I didn’t notice I was hurrying, but maybe I was. Denis always thinks I’m hurrying and not paying attention to the semi bearing down on me. Came out with two canvas bags loaded, stepped off the curb, twisted my ankle and fell down in a disgraceful heap, wracked a knee and the heel of my hand. They still hurt! Not that I’ve never done this before. But this time I managed to somehow use the other knee to explode a half gallon of milk which, again, somehow, shot up my arm, totally drenching my jacket, my glasses, the side of the car…I knelt there on all fours in a puddle of rain and milk, shocked, then realized I’d also lost a shoe. I put the remaining groceries in the car and finally found it way under a black Jeep parked in the next space. Totally unreachable. Do you know how it feels to, like, dream you’re naked at the public library and then you wake up relieved that it was only a dream? I kept wishing I’d wake up when I had to walk back into the store and ask for help, limping, one shoe missing, dripping with milk, looking, I’m sure, deranged. A sweet young man gallantly got on his hands and knees in the rain and with a stick poked my shoe back out and handed it to me saying, well, at least you didn’t break your leg. Which I maybe coulda done now that… oh well, not to go into that. I guess I did cry a little when I got into the car. At home, Denis was upset and is trying to give me shuffling lessons. Don’t RUN! he says. Don’t even WALK! Just SHUFFLE.

I’ve changed my mind about the wilderness and am asking to be taken out for dinner. Denis loves me a lot, but in the end, I’d say it takes a bigger person to shepherd us through the parking lots.
*I like Willie Nelson's rendition of this song.

Lay off the garlic-stuffed olives

Sorry, I’ve been away on travels south of home. Not able to post. Today we leave Chattanooga. Hard to leave. Kinda heart-achy. Can’t seem to get enough of Sember, Shaun, and grandchildren.
Denis found this among the calendar events, school papers and pics clipped to the refrigerator and says if I don’t post it, he will. So… from our oldest granddaughter.

Assignment: Descriptive Paragraph.
Directions: Describe a favorite relative.
Grade: 95%
My grandmother is a sweet old lady with snow white hair and blue sea eyes. Even though her breath smells like old smelly garlic her lotion smells like Magnolius and sweet butter. Her clothes are like winter rains. Most days she is quiet as a little white mouse. Her voice is like a Mockingbird singing in the breeze.
- Manessah LaRose

The Love of God

In Chicago taking care of The Great Aunt this week. She's in a mood today. She’s annoyed because I’d like to shower and take a walk. When I tell her after two hours of coffee, looking at pics and chatting up the charm of grandkids that I need to do some work, I read her disbelief. I tell her I’ve got a writing deadline and some mail to answer. She rolls her eyes. She says severely: I can SEE things are AS USUAL.

I know I shouldn’t respond. Soon she reappears in her turquoise teddy bear sweatshirt to glare at me from the lazyboy, waiting for lunch. I fix her a chicken sandwich and she declares it the best she’s ever had. We watch a Law and Order rerun because she’s in love with the detective, Brisco. I mix up some ginger molasses cookies. When the dough is made into little round balls dipped in sugar, she helps by flattening them with a glass bottom. Then she tells me she’s never liked ginger cookies. She might, she says, if they had chocolate chips in them. When the first batch is cooled she eats four with a cup of tea.

Last night I read to her from her “Choice Gleanings” calendar. The scripture verse was Who can separate us from the love of God? Nothing. She got misty eyed. It was her husband’s favorite verse. “Gleanings” always ends with a poem that gags me, but she finds them familiar and lovely. I asked if she ever painted or wrote when she was younger.

“No. None of us five girls ever did anything. We weren’t encouraged!” She remembers liking hymns from a book used at her New Bedford church in the 1920s. One day she wrote her own verses to a tune and showed them to her mother who was petite, prim, and permanently pissed off -- though the Great Aunt would never say so -- who said, OH, RUTH! The tone must have been derisive because she said, I never (ne-vah) wrote again.

Wasn’t your father artistic? “Oh, yes. He took painting lessons when we were little. But he quit.” She pointed to a painting of her father’s boyhood home in Scotland. No droopy vines and dripping purple sunsets with little windows aglow. Just a worn path leading to a thatched cottage, and a few golden flowers. Sort of impressionistic. Nicely done.

Who wants to be eighty-eight with Alzheimer’s? The Great Aunt has not asked for this.

Letter to friend: against darkness

While I wait for the DRANO to work in our tub b-4 I take my shower....I’ll write you.
Am feeling quite cocky. Yesterday I wrote a page for the next Notes.

I can’t wait to hear your songs. I hope you won’t be wearing angel costumes.
Macs are fun, and yes, I can distort myself with its camera, but I do that so easily without the Mac’s help.

Yes, well. I got in trouble with Denis because I forgot to take care of Margie. (He worries about me.) Spent more time and energy with our friends than I really had to offer. Somehow, I get to thinking that if Margie doesn’t take care of this or that person, then no one will, forgetting the OBVIOUS Being and Body involved in our lives. It is a perverse sort of pride that makes one so discontent with being finite. At the same time we want to kick against the fallenness of this life, lift the darkness a little bit, (be honest, Margie, you want to lift it completely) and it isn’t always possible. The thing so easy to forget is God’s ability to raise beauty out of ashes. I’ve witnessed it again and again, so why do I forget that, too?

Ransom’s board meeting is coming up. Next Wed. they begin arriving here in Rochester. We have spaces and places for them to stay. And two of the spouses, dear friends, are coming early to prepare food and to take over the cooking for me. How lucky is that? We relish our times together, it’s never long enough. We not only do “board business” we take care of each other, we watch a movie and talk, this year we read Home by Marilynn Robinson and we’ll discuss it together. Lots of love, prayer, and a little taste of heaven as we come together in joy, weariness, sometimes hurting, baffled, and yet we always leave encouraged and inspired to keep on.

So there’s a little snapshot of what I’m looking forward to.

And, oh. In the midst of whatever else. Dad (my step-father) had his foot amputated yesterday. My sisters and brothers have taken turns being with Mom at the hospital, which is a hundred miles from where they live. Everyone thought he might be dying. But he keeps on living and suffering. Unable to speak or move much, but very aware, most of the time. I offer all of it up -- a tangled ball for God to sort out. And I don’t dare think the shameful, selfish, God forgive me, question, how inconvenient will the timing of his death be for me?

Awwright. It’s time to unplug that drain.

Skybluesky - Either way

Someone asked recently how was the Wilco concert. I been thinkin bout it…

Either Way
Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will blow away
Maybe I won’t feel so afraid
I will try to understand
Either way

Maybe you still love me
Maybe you don’t
Either you will or you won’t
Maybe you just need some time alone
I will try to understand
Everything has its plan
Either way
I’m gonna stay
Right for you…

It was the first night of their SkyblueSky tour. We speculated that when Wilco signed the contract for Rochester they might have thought they were going to New York not Minnesota. Fans who drove in from Mpls were galled to leave their sophisticated venues for our wastelands. But it was sold out after all. Wilco pulled songs from some past albums and the band was beautifully tight, all good musicians. Jeff Tweedy has a unique, interesting voice, his lyrics are imaginative, he’s a serious singer/songwriter. I like him a lot. The drummer was a wild man, but then most drummers are fun to watch. The lead guitarist could swivel his knees 380 degrees so as he played one leg was usually in the air pivoting around his body with a long foot dangling off the end which fascinated me for about thirty minutes.

We went with friends and afterwards no one specifically asked how I liked it so I didn’t have to say. Everyone else loved it. And now I feel bad, like I need to come out.

So this is hard to admit? I liked about 25 percent of the concert. I’d like to forget the rest. I guess I love the CD cause I can turn down the volume and forget this is a rock band? In live concert you don’t forget. One song was either a remake of Shock and Awe or Chicago’s O’Hare airport with runway lights full-up and 747s taking off en masse. The guitars and keyboards screamed and screamed and roared and roared and a million watts of white light were aimed directly into our eyeballs. Even with my eyes tight shut I could have read a size five font. For ten minutes they did this even though I got the point after fifteen seconds. While the fans whooped and squealed their e-ow, e-ows, I put on my sunglasses, got out my ear plugs, and felt a little sad for the rest of the concert.

Even carrying our first child I went to friends’ gigs and stood in front of their amps and felt the bass through layers of tissue, baby, and water all the way to my spine. Probably not a good idea for pregnant mothers. I like Wilco. Their Skybluesky album is still a favorite. I even like thunder and lightening and a bit of screaming for a second or two but, for now, live, I guess it’ll be Kimya or Rosie. Apologies to Travis: I love the Avett Brothers, but they might kill me in concert.